A hug was exactly what the doctor ordered for this New York grandma.
It had been a full year since Evelyn Shaw was last hugged, but even two weeks after she received both her COVID-19 vaccine shots, she still felt fearful of getting within 6 feet of her family — so her doctor wrote her a prescription for human contact.
“You are allowed to hug your granddaughter,” the family doctor wrote on an official prescription note that the 81-year-old Bronx resident’s daughter, SiriusXM radio host Jessica Shaw, posted to Twitter.
Jessica added that was the “first hug she’s had in a year” after strictly following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distancing advisories. “Thank you to all the scientists and doctors who made this happen!”
The now-viral tweet also included an emotional video of Evelyn hugging her grandbaby. The clip has racked up over 50,000 likes since being posted on Tuesday, with many commenting that it made them cry — while giving them hope for post-vaccination life.
“I’m really, really happy that it’s making people smile,” Evelyn’s granddaughter Ateret told Insider. “I know how hard it is to get a smile during this, and to get good news.”
Evelyn was profoundly cautious throughout the coronavirus pandemic, her other daughter, Dr. Laura Shaw Frank, told the outlet.
“We’ve been really carefully following the rules and the laws and what the CDC says and what [Dr. Anthony] Fauci says and what [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo says and what everybody’s telling us to do, we do it. So it’s been a long year,” Frank said. “Since last March, no one has hugged [Evelyn], and she [would] not permit anyone to hug her.”
Frank and Ateret procured the doctor’s note to convince Evelyn that it was safe at last to be touched again.
“We stood 6 feet away and we handed her the note, and she opened it up and she took out the prescription and read the note — and she burst out crying,” Frank said. “And then they hugged, and it was amazing, and that’s the video I took. We all cried. It was a really beautiful moment.”
It “felt like a miracle,” Ateret added.